Chronic nasal obstruction (CNO) is a health disorder with global incidence and morbidity, the diagnosis and management of which is a major health expense. CNO can occur in various forms, including incomplete or complete, unilateral or bilateral, and in various combinations. Billions of dollars are spent annually on pharmaceuticals, allergy testing, allergy immunotherapy, nasal dilators, nasal strips (e.g. Breathe Right® strips) and other over-the-counter nasal aids, physician office visits, and surgical therapy to improve the nasal airway. Despite this, no simple, reliable, quantitative measure of CNO is currently available in the physician office that allows more accurate diagnosis, patient education, or assessments of therapeutic benefit after treatment (outcomes measure). Current methods including acoustic rhinometry and acoustic rhinomanometry have failed in this regard largely due to inaccuracy, lack of reliability, and the requirement for large, bulky instrumentation that is time consuming and virtually impossible to utilize in the clinical setting. Other than physical examination (nose exam, anterior rhinoscopy, nasal endoscopy), there is currently no objective measure of nasal airway obstruction in mainstream healthcare.
Accordingly, there is a need for a diagnostic measuring and method that may be available to medical practitioners or respiratory physiologists, which would provide objective measurements of nasal passage airflow, and do so in a manner that is both reliably accurate and precise while being unobtrusive to the patient. The target users for such devices include otolaryngologists, facial plastic surgeons, allergists, nasal physiologists, internists and family medicine practitioners. Not only would such measurements be useful in diagnosis, but also for measuring and tracking treatment outcomes for a variety of different nasal conditions.